Hangin’ with Joel Salatin! (video)

After forty to fifty years of managing the soil, harvesting the crops, and raising the animals — very hard work, indeed — there comes a point when it’s time to shut it down.

Back in the day (actually, really not that long ago), farms were multi-generational. Sons and daughters were groomed to someday take over the family business.

Unfortunately, those times are no more.

Over half of our farmers are sixty years of age and older. According to this article, the number of farmers over the age of 65 grew by nearly 22 percent between the years 2002 and 2007 alone. Furthermore, statistics from the Agricultural Department show that for every one farmer and rancher under the age of 25, there are five who are 75 and older.

For most of these aged farmers, their sons and daughters have moved on from generations-old family traditions and farmlands in pursuit of cultivating more corporate pastures. As a result, their mothers and fathers are working well past retirement age.

As farmer Joel Salatin says, “If the young people don’t get in, then the old people can’t get out.”